Indian rivers turning into drains: Report

New Delhi, Jan 05(ANI): A recent report has suggested that most of the Indian rivers are in a bad state and most of them are turning into drains due to the mismanagement of country's sewage system.

The Center for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based advocacy and research organization recently released its 7th report, entitled as "Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta."

The report took three and half years of research work and surveys of water and wastewater management of around 71 cities in India and is present in two different volumes.

"Every city was the same old story, it had devastated its surface water, it was depleting its ground water and it had no plan for managing its water or wastewater," said the editor of the report, Souparno Banerjee.

"As a result of neglect and bad planning, many cities have turned their rivers into drains, and the citizens who live around them no longer remember that they were once pristine sources of water," he adds.

The report has pointed out various rivers which have turned into drains due to mismanagement of sewage system as well as because of ever growing Indian cities, The India Real Time reports.

"The Budha Nullah in Ludhiana was once a darya, or river. It had freshwater which flowed clean. One generation changed its form and its name," said Sunita Narain, the Director General of the research and advocacy organization.

Narain also specifically pointed out towards the Mithi river of Mumbai which has now officially turned into a drain and isn't able to perform its original function of carrying the floodwaters from the city to the ocean.

"It was called a river. It flowed like a river. But today even an official environmental status report only knows this living river as a storm-water drain. One more city has lost its river in one generation," she adds.

Narain blamed India's negligence of wastewater management responsible for this woeful state of the Indian rivers.

"There is complete lack of data, research and understanding on this issue in the country," she added. (ANI)